Category Archives: Call of the Curlew

Call of the Curlew by Elizabeth Brooks

The first thing that will draw your attention to the book is the incredible cover design. This is down to the magic of Leo Nickolls. Just one of the best covers this year.

Call of the Curlew by Elizabeth Brooks is set on the bleak windswept Tollbury Marshes, eighty-six-year-old Virginia Wrathmell has spent all her life here, but she knows the end is near. It is New Year’s Eve 2015 and as she stands looking out over the bleak marshes holding the skull of a Curlew she is remembering something that happened many years ago. A powerful and evocative story of loss and of guilt and the how the past can live with you forever.

Virginia was adopted by Clem and Lorna as the war arrived in 1939. But Virginia has been haunted by an event during those early days of WWII that has loved with her all these years and now as New Year’s Eve 2015 has arrived she knows that this will be her last day.

During those early days of WWII, a German aircraft crashed on the marsh and Clem attempts to rescue the pilot. From that moment life for Virginia has changed forever. No clues from me here as to what happened but I have to congratulate the author on a quite superb atmospheric and haunting novel. There really is something about Call of the Curlew that will attract readers of novels by the

Brontë’s indeed Elizabeth Brooks call her novel “her homage to immersive and evocative writing of Charlotte Brontë”. Marshes have real character I speak from much experience here, and this plays a real part of this outstanding story. An ever changing part of the landscape through the seasons but also one of real and present danger. I totally loved Virginia the main character. But the other characters you will meet Elizabeth Brooks weaves them so brilliantly into the storyline. Some you will warm to others you may not. Call of the Curlew is a story that I totally loved and one that I know many are going to love just as much as I have done.

320 Pages.

Thank you to for the review copy of Call of the Curlew by Elizabeth Brooks

Call of the Curlew by Elizabeth Brooks will be published by Doubleday on 28th June 2018. You can pre-order through Waterstones, Amazon and through your local independent bookshop.